Literary Masterpieces (cough)

Every now and again, I decide to write a book. I spend weeks covering small pieces of paper with storylines and characters. Then, finally, when the time is right, I file it all neatly in a cardboard wallet, file it away somewhere, and write whatever comes into my head. About halfway through Chapter One - or whatever chapter it is that I decided to start with - I stop and reread and decide that I have as much chance of becoming a published author as... as... as I have of finding a humorous analogy with which to finish this sentence.

Six months later, I run out of hard-drive space and while looking for something to delete I come across my last attempt at literary fame. And I read it again, and I think, hey, this isn't actually all that bad, maybe I should give this writing lark another try. By this time I have a slightly different story in mind, so I abandon the last one and start again with small pieces of paper.

At this point, my one remaining hope is that one day I will have enough of these fragments that I can glue them all together in a suitable order and suddenly have a complete story.

In the meantime, I present some of those fragments to you. Think of them as the forty pages of your favourite author's next book that the publishers sneakily slide into the back of your favourite author's previous book so that you suddenly run out of story when you thought there was a good eighth-of-an-inch left.

• Bic is my best contender for "story that might actually get finished one day". Its plot, and those who inhabit it, mutate with every iteration, but who knows, maybe one day they'll settle down. I hadn't read any Robert Rankin when I named the pub. Honest.
• This beginning doesn't even have a title, but it does include the mad scientist scene I've used in about half-a-dozen other attempts.
• This one was provisionally entitled Portals.
• From Lisa Simpson Overdrive, the documentary scene. This one started life as a cyberpunk spoof (and since it stars someone else's property would never have been a candidate for publication), but somewhere along the line I had an utterly brilliant idea about an all-out war between Mankind and those little grey space aliens that apparently abduct people from their beds, and decided to slip it into Overdrive as historical background. It was such a stroke of genius that I couldn't figure out why no-one had made a big-budget effects-laden action movie along those lines. Lo and behold, as if by magic Independence Day appeared. Bastards.
• This witty and satirical piece of comic-book continuity was possibly intended to be part of something. Or maybe I just wrote it because I was bored and felt that I needed the practice. Or maybe I just wanted to get something off my chest. You, the viewer, decide.
• And last but not least, the story of Andy & Jennifer. It differs from the others here because it owes part of its existence to a beautiful but anonymous co-author. Sadly she lost interest in the idea even before I did, so this is all that remains. Every eighteen months or so, she reads it again and says something about getting back to it. She lies.

Not part of the Great Unfinished Novel, but the newsgroup posting I got the most fan mail for.

No homepage would be complete without a little poetry. So here's my Poem On The Underground.

For the 1970's "Star Trek in flares" epic Space:1999.

Things to do in Harrow when you're dead.